First day in Cape Town

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After a reasonable night's sleep I woke to a very cloudy and overcast Cape Town. At least the rain had stopped. After my usual process for waking up, make a cup of tea, read the news on the BBC website, check out what stupid posts have been put on Facebook, have a look at Instagram, I went down and had an excellent coffee in the hotel restaurant. I spent half an hour with my nose in one of the many books that I'd brought with me. Since I was on my own for 9 days I thought I'd make the most of the opportunity to read. The book I had started was How To Stop Time. I found it fascinating and difficult to put down. I just can't imagine where writers get these amazing ideas for books.

I thought I'd have a gentle start to my time in Cape Town and decided to walk to the V & A Waterfront. I am really lucky in that I can look at a map once and find it easy to remember and visualise where to go after that. My dear Di used to say that I had built in GPS and in a way I guess that I have. It took me about half an hour to walk to the Waterfront which is actually a huge area, once the old docks, a lot of which have been converted to very up-market blocks of apartments, shopping areas, cafes and restaurants. InterestingIy, amongst all of this there are still fishing boats and old factories. The old slipways are still in use, many filled with rusty boats being repaired and given a fresh coat of paint before being sent off on their travels again.

I spent the day at the Waterfront wandering around the old converted warehouses which now hold very swanky clothes outlets or craft shops and boutiques of course. I tried out a number of the cafés, all of which were really nice. Decent coffee and nice snacks and lunches. The staff at the cafés were really friendly too. That's always nice. After my second coffee and some lunch I decided to visit the aquarium. Someone had recommended it to me and the modern aquariums can be really good. Despite aquarium in Monterey in California is just amazing. Anyway, the Cape Town aquarium was really nice. Lots of interesting things to see and loads of information about the fish and ecology as well which I always find really interesting. Well worth a visit, and it's always interesting seeing a shark or Manta Ray from about half a metre away!

Finally the sun came out and the clouds floated away revealing Table Mountain which looked stunning. I barely saw another cloud for ages. I decided to just stroll around and stand read my book in the sun listening to the street entertainers which seemed to be on every corner. A lovely day to spend the afternoon. Eventually I decided it was time to return to the hotel. I walked past a lot of old buildings like warehouses, huge concrete silos 7 floors high and old factories. All had been converted to museums, very swanky hotels or shopping and eating areas. Nicely done though.

Back at the hotel I had a snooze and then dinner in the hotel restaurant. I was making excellent inroads into my book. Just couldn't put it down. I could barely put it down! A couple of beers and an early night was called for. However, the wind had really got up. If I had the windows in my hotel room open it sucked the curtains out and theatened to rip them off. Sense prevailed and I closed the windows only to be kept awake half the night by the huge noise of the wind howling round the hotel and a cable slapping against the side of the building. Eventually tiredness took hold and I dozed off.

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